i really hate to be negative i really do but i just cannot give this game any slack. it kinda blows. i wanted it to be cool, and i tried to go in professionally, but it was not it. my comparison is len'en 4 and isaac but i'm pretty sure zun played exactly two games of risk of rain 1 and made the game with that knowledge.
now i know len'en 4 isn't a roguelike, it's just an upgrade game like god's own learn to fly (flash), but i'm comparing them for being relatively avant garde in the realm of touhou and for it having a very heavy emphasis on replayability.
i'll be a proper youtuber here and go down the list.
the biggest killer of the game is marisa herself and how she is affected by cards. she starts with the world's most boring shot, composed of nothing but half of her modern zero power iteration. and unlike mountain of faith, there are no power items in this game, so what you're looking at is what you get.
now seeing this in the previews, this was actually what made me the most hopeful for the game. i mention in prior posts: "major tear modifiers". the idea of compounding items (cards) that each provide your shot with some sort of change. maybe it becomes a laser, maybe it starts wiggling, maybe its an aiming retile, whatever. the point is that they can all stack on eachother. you use your attack differently every time you get a decent run going. isaac's default shot (tears) is unwieldy, slow, weak, and boring. it's just incredibly versatile when paired with the stuff you find all over the place.
marisa's shot never changes. doesn't even get hard replacements. there's some cards that increase your "power", but it just gives you more lines of normal green bullets. there are a few that provide individual options to kinda be around you and also shoot, but none of them create synergies that actually change how you would approach the idea of "offense". they're just a bit more firepower.
for the most part, cards that don't just change numbers are very tame. "spawns a lil floating head that collects falling items for you". "destroy bullets a very small space behind you", "lower point of collection". instead of just going with the flow and making your build as you are given options, it's way better to have a specific plan going in and only pick things that are involved in it.
don't worry, you don't even have to think of the plan yourself! i'll tell ya what it is. three aunn and an urumi. getting back to that.
now the cards that just change numbers are a bit more substantial, and stack on themselves more often. damage +15%, magic circle size up, speed up, etc.
oh yeah magic circle: this thing is actually great. the cool part of this game. instead of bombing, x lets you throw your grazebox and slow bullets within it. since graze is how you get money, it's pretty useful. i like it and it would be a cool bomb replacement in other games, as well.
of course, having no bombs mean no master spark. despite this being a marisa game you don't do as many marisa things as you may expect.
anyway, here's how you win. urumi's card makes it so bullets dont move at all instead of just slowing down while in your magic circle. aunn's card decreases the cooldown of the magic circle by 33%. ya see what im gettin at?
now people have said press x to win about touhou but i don't think they knew how right they were. if you're doin nothing but shooting while hammering your magic circle again and again, you can't really lose. pair with flandre card (sometimes destroys bullets in the magic circle), and mallet (use to turn bullets in front of you into money) for maximum, redundant, effectiveness.
alright next segment
so right when i play roguelikes and i wanna win i will take it seriously. if i pick the hardest character in isaac i am not gonna pretend im finishing the run if i start with a useless item on a bad floor. i reset. i reset a lot actually because a strong start, especially one that sets you up with enough resources to not just do well but make use of all the options that exist in any given floor, is how you are gonna win. if the first item i see is not one thats like immediately useful (less than half of the items) i am resetting.
yet despite that, i still reset more in 18.5 than anything else.
the money you get from any individual wave of fairies, spent after any wave at a shop, varies so ridiculously wildly that if you are not starting on one of the best ones you're just playing slots as to if any decent build is going to be possible that stage.
best to reset until you get "big fairy ukyo" or something else with a lot of grazable bullets. takes the nondeterminism of the whole thing away, unfortunately.
also about the stages: they're fairly short. you aren't doing a "run" anywhere in this game. your build is gonna be gone after 4-6 fairy waves, 1 nonspell, and 1-2 spellcards. bosses are incredibly brief here. the only one even as long as a traditional first stage boss is the final boss, takane. unexpected pick. could be cool. one non, three spells. first non is swiped from 18, but it's a good non. first spell is you know, a spellcard. it's there.
second spell is one of my favorites from 18, so uh, it works. third, the final attack before you like, win the game, is really simple. kinda like that cool junko laser one except not lasers or additive blending. seems like there was supposed to be a rainbow theme in it. should have had runtime bullet colors, buddy.
now this actually takes a lot longer than you'd expect due to the fact that everything seems to have waaaay more hp than they would in any other game. you think pcb spells last a while? double that
also yeah, a lot of the other boss' patterns in this game are from other games. i wouldn't mind if they were full bosses and the card mechanics were better because then you could try fights from the entire series with a bunch of unique movesets, but they usually have one non one spell, and i've got no unique movesets.
and one more thing about the shot type now in comparison to len'en 4: that game doesn't have any change in shot over any whole run, but things there are still great. all of the shots are pretty different from eachother, and you have so many options with all the characters there are.
i suppose final thing to talk about: what actually happens in the game!!!! who does what???
going into this i thought this was a MARISA game. a game about marisa. my dumb ass really thought there was a chance for mima. that was probably an unreasonable assumption to begin with because the non-tasofro decimal games don't tend to have much for story, but ya know with the red eyes thing and the no reimu, i was thinkingggggg
but this is not a marisa game. she's got no lasers, she doesn't steal anything, she gets cards and fights takane at the end.
story overview: despite chimata chilling out, ability cards are still in circulation! without her knowledge! it's the black markets!
the black markets are being run by takane and unspecified allies, and marisa goes and almost stops them. you get to chimata she says "marisa! they're ruining my markets! take the worst card in the game to nitori to fix it!". you get to nitori with the worst card in the game and she says "marisa.....buddy........i'm boutta buss things up. take this card. the look on takanes face will be incredible" and she gives you the second worst card in the game. you take it to takane she says "JESUS dude what GARBO card are you carrying around?? if you don't get rid of that NOW theres no way ill be able to make money on my black markets" but you cannot unequip cards so she stops making money on black markets.
that's it. the end. thanks for listening!
actually there is one bonus stage where every other wave is a boss but i didnt bother much because i had already played urumi+aunn*3 a fair amount of times.
spongelevatorthere are good games past twenty fifteen bro cmaaan cmaaan. i got a list of absolutely immaculate stuff from 2021 don't even worry
so why are her eyes red indeed? well people were asking him "whats up with the title screen" and he said "there's a secret on the title screen", or something. little did we know he was not talking about the massive red eyes marisa thing and actually meant "when you unlock cards they gather on the title"
and that's it! red eyes mean nothing, no braid means nothing, hat is just off for fun. i mean ingame when talking she just uses her 18 sprites anyway
